Stevens, regarded as one of the league’s best coaches, has every reason to. The Cavs go as LeBron goes and LeBron had his lowest scoring game of the postseason in Monday’s Game 1, scoring 15 points on 5 for 16 from the field.

Stevens said that ‘nobody has been better’ at making adjustments than LeBron.

#Celtics coach Brad Stevens: Nobody has been better at making adjustments over the course of time than (LeBron James). He’s tremendously talented. But tremendously bright as well. … That’s the great challenge of having to play against a team like this and a player like him.

As many have noted following the game, has a history of playing Game 1s like the first round of a boxing match. He told reporters after the game that he saw things in Game 1 that prepared him for Tuesday’s Game 2.

LeBron: “I got a good sense of how they played me today, and how I need to play going into Game 2.”

We don’t even have to look to past seasons to assess that LeBron’s history of slow-playing Game 1s is pretty undeniable. He was 7 for 17 (41 %) in Cleveland’s first round Game 1 loss and was a brutal 12 for 30 in Game 1 of the second round, being carried by Cleveland’s supporting cast to a win in Toronto.

It looks like Cleveland will make their big lineup change by inserting Tristan Thompson into the starting lineup in Game 2, but we should listen to Stevens: the biggest adjustments for Cleveland will come from No. 23.

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